Chapter 19
Nola POV
The weight of him was an anchor dropping straight through the floorboards.
Two hundred and twenty pounds of dense, scarred athletic muscle descended over my frame, pressing me deep into the charcoal cotton of the mattress.
The chill of the bedroom—a steady draft leaking past the weatherstripping of the brick-framed windows—vanished the instant his bare skin met mine.
The furnace of his chest pinned my ribs, the coarse hair over his sternum grazing the sensitized tips of my breasts, sending a violent wave of heat washing through my lower belly.
My breath caught in a sharp, dry rasp.
Chase didn't take his weight off me. He braced his forearms against the mattress on either side of my head, his gray eyes burning through the blue-white gloom of the blizzard like heated iron.
"Hands," he rasped, his voice scraping the low register.
I lifted my trembling arms from the sheets.
Slowly, deliberately, his large hands slid over mine.
His calloused fingers slipped between my knuckles, locking our fingers together with an unyielding, possessive grip.
He pressed the backs of my hands flat into the pillows beside my temples, pinning my wrists down, taking away every remaining avenue of retreat.
The physical contrast was staggering. His palms were massive, thick with the rough scar tissue of years of tape and composite sticks, while my own felt fragile, swallowed by the heat of his grip.
"Look at me, Nola," he commanded softly, his face hovering barely an inch above mine.
I looked.
The gold flecks in my vision seemed to burn in the dark, reflecting the sharp, jagged pale line of the scar through his brow. His pupils were blown wide, black swallowing the gray irises, his jaw relaxed into an expression of absolute, terrifying focus.
"You're right here with me," he whispered, his breath hot against my lips, smelling of mint and the dark tea we’d shared in the kitchen. "Nowhere else. Nobody else."
My fingers contracted around his knuckles, squeezing until my nails bit into the calluses on the back of his hands.
"I'm here," I breathed, my vocal cords tight, my throat thick with a sudden rush of blood.
"Tell me," he demanded, his hips shifting forward, his heavy thigh sliding between mine, parting my legs with slow, irresistible authority. "Tell me what I'm taking."
The rough denim of his lounge pants was gone; my own clothes had been discarded into the shadows beside the bed. There was nothing left between us except the fevered friction of our skin.
"Everything," I whispered, the word tearing out of my chest, stripped of pride, stripped of the academic armor I had carried for three years. "Take everything, Chase."
A low, guttural growl vibrated deep in his diaphragm, rumbling straight through my breastbone.
* * *
He let go of my left hand, his fingers sliding down to grip the curve of my hip, his palm burning through the skin like a brand.
He didn't rush. He positioned himself between my thighs with agonizing, calculated slowness, the rigid, burning heat of his body pressing against the soft, wet threshold of mine.
The first touch sent a shockwave through my nervous system that locked my lungs behind my ribs.
My head fell back against the pillow, my neck arching, my heels digging hard into the dark mattress. The sensation was immense, an overwhelming fullness that stretched my muscles to their limit, threatening to splinter my control into a thousand pieces.
Chase froze.
His forearms trembled with the strain of holding his mass suspended above me, the thick veins along his shoulders standing out like cords under the pale skin. His teeth clenched, a drop of sweat gathering at his temple and falling to splash against my collarbone.
"Breathe, sweetheart," he ordered, his voice thick with a ruined, gravelly rasp. He lowered his mouth, brushing his lips against the shell of my ear. "Breathe for me. Match my chest."
I forced my lungs to expand, drawing in the scent of cedar, salt, and raw male exertion, feeling the steady rise and fall of his ribs against mine.
"Good girl," he murmured against my throat, his lips trailing a line of open-mouthed kisses along the tendon in my neck. "Just like that. Let me in, Nola. You're built for me. All mine."
The praise hit my bloodstream like neat liquor, warming the stiffness in my pelvis, relaxing the tight bands of muscle until my hips tilted up on pure instinct.
Chase groaned—a broken, feral sound torn straight from his chest—and pressed forward.
He seated himself fully within me.
The breath shattered out of my lungs in a ragged, high-pitched whimper that dissolved against his jaw.
He stayed motionless for three long, agonizing heartbeats, letting my body mold to his shape, letting the stinging burn subside into a deep, throbbing ache that pulsed in sync with our joined blood.
Then he began to move.
The rhythm was slow, heavy, and devastatingly deep. He withdrew until the absence of his heat made my hips reach for him in a desperate plea, then drove back in with a steady, commanding torque that drew a strangled cry from my throat.
His hand never left my hip. His fingers dug into the bone, anchoring my pelvis to the mattress, guiding every roll of my body against his.
"Look at me," he commanded, his breath hitching on a ragged gasp as he increased the pace.
I opened my eyes through a haze of dark heat.
His face was an inch from mine, his dark brows pulled low, his mouth parted as his breath tore through his teeth in harsh, ragged bursts. He was watching the way my lips trembled, the way my throat flushed deep crimson with every concussive thrust.
"You take me so damn well," he rasped, his voice dropping into a dirty, hypnotic cadence that dismantled the last remnants of my sanity. "Look at what you do to me, Nola. You feel how hard I am for you? Feel how deep you have me?"
"Chase... please," I choked out, my heels dragging across the sheets, my free hand flying up to knot into the dense muscle of his shoulder, my fingernails biting into the scar tissue across his back.
"I've got you," he growled, leaning down to crush his mouth over mine, swallowing my broken gasps.
His tongue surged into my mouth, matching the rhythmic, punishing slide of his hips below. The friction was an inferno, a blistering, suffocating pressure that coiled tight in the pit of my stomach, winding tighter with every stroke until my vision grayed at the edges.
The storm outside seemed to fade into nothingness. The only reality was the concussive slap of our skin, the iron grip of his fingers on my hip, and the relentless, driving power of his body claiming mine.
The coil snapped.
A violent, blinding release detonated behind my navel, ripping through my pelvis in long, shuddering waves that made my spine bow off the mattress.
My throat clamped shut on a silent scream, my inner muscles clenching around him in rapid, uncontrollable spasms.
Chase’s control fractured down the center.
His hips drove forward twice more, savage and deep, his hands hauling my legs higher around his waist before his forehead slammed into the pillow beside my ear.
A shattered, guttural roar ripped from his chest as his own release tore through him, his body locking into rigid, trembling iron as he emptied himself into me.
* * *
The silence that followed was broken only by the violent, uneven storm of our respiration.
Chase collapsed heavily over me, his weight burying me into the mattress, his face tucked into the curve where my neck met my shoulder. His skin was slick with sweat, fever-hot, his chest heaving against my flattened ribs in rapid, shuddering hitches that matched the wild tempo of my own heart.
He didn't pull away.
He didn't slide out or retreat into the shadows of the room.
With slow, careful movements, he shifted his weight, gathering me into his arms and rolling us together onto our sides.
He pulled my back flush against his broad chest, curling his large frame around mine like a shield.
His right arm slid under my neck, cradling my head, while his heavy left arm wrapped over my waist, his splayed hand flattening over my stomach, anchoring me to his warmth.
His long legs tangled with mine, his heavy thigh resting over my calves, locking me in his perimeter.
The cold draft from the windows brushed my exposed shoulder, but beneath the heavy woolen quilt he dragged over our bodies, we were an island of absolute heat.
His lips moved against the damp skin at the back of my neck.
He pressed a slow, lingering kiss to the base of my skull, then another along the arch of my cervical spine, his rough stubble grazing my skin with an aching, tender reverence that made my throat tighten.
"You okay?" he whispered into my hair, the words thick with gravel and exhaustion.
I couldn't speak right away.
My knuckles were still curled against the quilt, my body humming with a deep, liquid ache that made my limbs feel heavy as lead. Under my shoulder blades, the massive, rhythmic thud of his heart was steady, beating with a slow, protective power that resonated through my bones.
"Yes," I managed, my voice small, muffled against the pillow.
His arm tightened around my waist, his palm pressing slightly deeper into my lower abdomen, holding me against him as if he expected someone to try to tear me away.
I stared into the dark room, watching the pale blue light of the blizzard filter through the horizontal slats of the blinds.
The clinical rules were dead. The grant, the fellowship, the defensive armor I had spent my entire life forging—it had all burned away in the fire of this bed.
A quiet, suffocating terror settled into my chest alongside the heat.
I wasn't just his assignment. I wasn't just the girl who checked his telemetry in the dark of a basement.
I was irrevocably, hopelessly in love with him.
And as the wind battered the glass outside, I closed my eyes, terrified of what would happen when the morning light forced us back into the world.